For the uninitiated, McMenamins is a local brewery that buys up
historic buildings and converts them into brewpubs and/or hotels. They
do a dynamite job, too. Kennedy School is an old grade school that now
houses rooms you can stay in, a theater, and a restaurant. It’s a nice
place to visit and hang out, so you’d think that would make it a good
place for a reunion. Not so.

They stuck us in the old gym, which wouldn’t have been too bad except
the lighting was exactly wrong. They needed to either turn it up to be
light enough to see by, or turn it down so it would be closer to a
school dance. Instead, it was this sort of pseudo-twilight that made
it just dark enough to be unable to read name tags but light enough for
everyone to watch you squint at them and wonder who they are.

I hung out most of that time with Tony, Jenn’s friend Apryl’s husband.
Tony is the bomb. He told me some stories about his high school reunions
in Springfield, OR. Too funny. Anyway, that was the only real redeeming
factor. I hope my reunion is not as lame as that, but I’m sure it will
be.

I think my expectations were set slightly high. After seeing Romy and
Michele’s High School
Reunion
more times than I care to count, I guess I expected things to go down
like that. Trust me, that’s not what happened. It was just sort of lame.
Like a bad high school dance.

So that was Friday night.

Saturday morning Jenn and I were at my parents’ house by 7:30a so we
could have a garage sale. We went through all of our stuff, combined it
with my parents’ stuff, and came up with actually quite a decent sized
sale. We ran it until around 3:00p. My mom was sort of disappointed with
the turnout for it; I guess more people usually show up. We choose to
blame it on Oktoberfest - too many people out eating wienerschnitzel and
not enough garage saling. Oh well. I came out $41.15 ahead and a lot
lighter on the junk, Jenn got $9.00 and didn’t get rid of as much junk.
My parents did all right with somewhere around $285 of garage sale
proceeds. I wonder what it would have been like if we had a better
turnout.

Saturday night at 6:00p Jenn and I went to Jenn’s grandma’s house for
dinner in celebration of Jenn’s parents’ anniversary. We had chicken
cordon bleu, twice-baked potatoes, and corn on the cob. It was a very
good, quite tasty dinner, but, man, it was heavy. I haven’t eaten like
that for a while.

Sunday Jenn and I had planned to do the laundry and clean the house -
the stuff that didn’t get done during the week.

I should never answer the phone.

Jenn’s dad called up at like 8:45a and asked if we wanted to go to
breakfast. Sure. He said they’d be at our place at 10:00a to pick us up.
Cool beans, right?

10:30a they showed up. Four hours later, we were in Issaquah, WA,
eating Krispy Kreme donuts.

Now, I love Krispy Kreme as much as the next guy - probably more,
actually - but I really didn’t plan on being gone all day long in the
name of donuts. We got home at 6:00p that night, exhausted, overloaded
with sugar, and nothing done.

I should never answer the phone.

So today’s Jenn’s birthday and she’s at home on her day off doing the
cleaning that we never got done yesterday. Happy birthday, baby! :)

I did see, while at the Issaquah, WA, Fred
Meyer, that they now carry plasma
televisions. I’ve wanted a new TV for a long time, especially one of
those, but I haven’t gotten around to it, mostly due to price. They’re
so exorbitantly expensive! But they had a pretty decent deal on a
Panasonic 42” one, so I got motivated to research them since this Friday
is employee double-discount day and I could potentially get 20% off the
already low $5500 price tag.

After researching the sets, though, they don’t look like they’re all I
thought they were cracked up to be. Most are just monitors, which means
you have to get a separate tuner box for them. All of them have fans,
which it seems, according to the reviews I’ve read, can be noisy. Not
all of them are HDTV compatible, which I feel is a load of shit
because if you’re going to pay that much for a TV, it’d better be HDTV
compatible and maybe even serve you a drink while you’re watching the
crystal clear picture. Not so.

a 40” beauty that is HDTV compatible. Love it. It’s a tube TV,
though, so it’s not going to be hanging on my wall any time soon, but
it’s just awesome. I wanna see it in person, and I’m sure I’ll be forced
to buy it. I’m going to see what Fred Meyer can do for me on THAT set.